


in your own time

by oogenesis



Category: Inazuma Eleven
Genre: Character Study, Gen, overthinking hissatsus, shortfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 19:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13488219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogenesis/pseuds/oogenesis
Summary: Stopping time has quite the impact when you're not used to it.





	in your own time

The first time he gets it right, the alien and completely unique sensation of time freezing — all sound cutting off, the wind just _stopping_ , the air itself becoming stone-grey — is such a shock to him that his concentration slips, the world resumes, and the ball smacks him in the face.

The second, third and fourth times he’s working on how long he can hold it; teeth clenched, mind and body straining and sweating in a cold and dead world, he manages only a few seconds before color and sound come roaring back, but it's longer every time. Nearly there. Nearly there.

The fifth time, the dosage has been quite increased, and everything sort of clicks into place, a sudden calm clarity over the whole thing. If you just sidestep mentally — slip through — _reach — pull_ — snapping one’s fingers really helps, as a mental trigger —

— there.

He’s all alone, in a frozen world.

A few yards before him Artemis’ leg is extended with the perfect grace of a good kick, the energy of it frozen in place; he is on the tips of his toes, caught in a balance no ballet dancer could hope to achieve. There’s the ball — suspended in the middle of its arc, a pass to Athena behind him halfway to connecting. He regards it a little, then turns away. There’ll be time to intercept it later… all the time in the world. For now he just walks around the pitch, marvelling at his ice-sculpture teammates. Athena is some ways behind him, his mouth open to call out, his ponytail that was streaming out behind him now as still and twisted as spun glass. A drop of sweat hangs suspended in the air just below his chin; it catches the light. A couple blades of grass and clumps of dirt, kicked up behind him from the force of his running, hover silently next to his frozen heel.

He walks on. Holding the balance of time in his mind is like moving with a book on top of his head, a careful state but not particularly precarious if he keeps everything even and calm. His breathing feels loud and close as though he’s in a small cabinet; the frozen air itself will only move for a little way around him. The deadness of the atmosphere is deafening. Could he leave the practice field entirely, walk outside to a grey and lifeless view? Is the entire town stopped in time, is all of Japan? Is the world?

He can’t leave, as it turns out. The doors to the field are locked from the inside, because these are after all some very dangerous children. But he can wander the perimeter, marvel idly at the snapshot of the practice game turning below his gaze, like a three-dimensional photograph, as real as life. Almost more real, because of how extensively he has the time to contemplate it. It must be that the world is frozen; it wouldn’t make sense for only one part to be time-stopped while the rest moves on around it. He has ground the rotation of the Earth to a halt. Stopped the solar system in its tracks, stars and galaxies suspended, the cosmos itself frozen in the practice-scuffed palm of his hand; when you have mastered time, you have mastered the entire universe. And all of it at the snap of his fingers; all of it for the sake of a mere game.

One can forgive him for the beginnings of a god complex.

**Author's Note:**

> comments highly appreciated as always!
> 
> edit i changed the title to something that sounded cooler lol


End file.
